


that flighty temptress, adventure

by gryffsirius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Based on a Tumblr Post, F/M, Lots of Cursing, M/M, grows up as a muggle, harry doesn't know he's a wizard, i love them, i worked hard on the backstory, kids supporting each other, the romantic subplot really isnt that important
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-05-25 21:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14985749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryffsirius/pseuds/gryffsirius
Summary: “How do you –” Harry begins, but Ron isn’t finished, and the next sentence tumbles out of his mouth like it’s what he’s been dying to say all along.“Harry, you’re a wizard.”None of them speak for a minute or two; Ron and Hermione are standing there with bated breath, as though waiting for Harry to embrace them or say something revolutionary or prepare himself to join whatever cult it is that they seem to be a part of. Harry, however, is silent because he just doesn’t know what words he should let come out of his mouth first.Finally, the words that do are, “You’re insane.”-aka harry doesn't know he's a wizard because the dursleys moved before he was hogwarts-aged and managed to hide from dumbledore, so he grows up and is in a bad place in the summer of 1997 when voldemort is after him and so the kids who wouldve been his friends at hogwarts go to find him and protect him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi. here's another au by me. this is the first fic that i've worked on that i've actually written the golden trio + other kids from their generation, if you've read any of my other work, you'll know that i normally stick to writing the marauders. however, i read a tumblr post and got inspired, so i decided to write this.
> 
> a few things:  
> 1\. i decided to actually give draco a redemption arc lol bc jkr was shit at that  
> 2\. i don't personally ship drarry, but tbh if you squint at this point you could probably see it. you do you.  
> 3\. i have a whole backstory for what happened while harry was trapped in the muggle world, but i'm going to incorporate it into the story just as throwaway details. if it's not clear by the time i finish the story as a whole, i'll add another 'fic' that's literally just a timeline of what happened while harry wasn't there in this au  
> 4\. that's all i have for now. i like the characterization. kudos and comments are Very much appreciated.
> 
> anyway, check me out on twitter @gryffsirius if you're interested in sending me nice things or hate. i hope you enjoy :))))

LONDON - 17 JULY 1997

It's summertime, and Harry James Potter is on his way to work.

His job is nothing special, just something to give him some savings and some wiggle room while he figures out what he wants to do with his life, but there's some aspects of it that he enjoys. Like the fact that he never really has to speak to anyone, or that the weird happenings that always seem to follow him around seem a little calmer in the store, or how no one ever seems to be in there except for the same old lady every day and his boss.

It's nice, working in a bookstore, and he thinks he enjoys it.

For now, that is. It's at least one small aspect of his life that he  _does_ enjoy.

To be honest, he likes pretty much nothing else about the way his life has been going up until his point. All he knows of his parents is that they died when he was a baby, in some kind of car crash that he somehow survived, with nothing except a scar shaped like a lightning bolt zig-zagging across his forehead. Harry doesn't have any memories of them, not even a picture to tell him what they looked like. He's tried to look them up several times, but they didn't seem to have done anything of note, so he's never been able to find many records of them anywhere. One time he found a marriage certificate during his research, and he's kept a copy of that ever since, almost as though he just needs it for proof that James and Lily Potter  _did_ exist.

Harry supposes that if he'd grown up with some other family besides his aunt and uncle, he'd probably know more about his parents, but Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon have always seemed to hold a deep-seated hatred for James and Lily, and Harry had learned from an early age that he should just stop asking about them. He wasn't going to learn anything more about them from the only people in his life who actually knew his parents, so he was left to his own devices, doing research and searching his vague memories.

Sometimes he thinks he can conjure up a faint trace of his mother's face, but it's gone almost instantaneously, replaced by the bright green flash that he's been told happened during the car crash.

Harry's had nightmares about that night for almost as long as he can remember. It started off pretty simple, just a dizzy, fearful feeling, accompanied by that green burst of light and sometimes, the sound of a high, cold voice laughing. He doesn't know where that came from. He thinks, most likely, that he imagined it, and it's just been sticking with him ever since.

The nightmares probably would have made sense if they'd stayed the same.

The thing is, though, they started changing in the year after he turned eleven. The family had moved to London at this point - Uncle Vernon's company had decided to open a new office and he was heading it up in the city - and for a while, Harry thought that maybe it was because of all the changes happening that he was having these new dreams. They were worse than anything he'd ever imagined, but almost totally incoherent: he would get images of a dark figure in the forest, and he would feel an intense desire that wasn't his, all for some kind of powerful object. A stone, he thought it was, but he had no idea why a stone would be considered powerful.

He always woke up with his scar burning and his head aching, but he was fairly certain that telling anyone would result in him being carted off to a mental facility, and while living with the Dursleys was hell, it was at least better than that.

The dreams stopped during the summer holidays, but picked up again during the school year, this time full of snakes and blood and spiders and tunnels and a girl being drawn in by a voice from a diary. Again, they stopped by the time he was let out of school.

Harry had one year of silence before they came back with a vengeance, this time largely featuring necromancy and blood sacrifices and some kind of dark lord rising in a graveyard, but at this point, he was a bit more preoccupied with things going on in his waking life to focus on this.

All he knew was that weird shit was constantly happening around him, and he wished he could say it was a coincidence, but it was happening too often over the course of his life to really be called that.

To this day, these coincidences continue to happen. Little things that occur when Harry's feeling certain ways, most of the time when he's angry or scared. Sometimes a light will burst when he wakes up from a bad dream. He thinks he's made a door slam when he's been in an argument. One time he swears that when he was having a fight with his aunt and uncle, the storm brewing in the sky outside got even worse.

Harry doesn't know how to explain it. He thought that maybe, over time, the people in his life would learn to deal with it the way he has, but here he is, almost seventeen years old, and everything weird that's been happening to him has been too much for everyone except one friend in his life.

It's this friend, Jonathan, that he's staying with right now. Jonathan's parents are on the wealthier side and have always been kind to Harry - his mother has made several comments on how polite Harry always is to them - and so when he finally couldn't take living with the Dursleys anymore, he went to Jon's house.

Jon and his family are on holiday right now, so Harry has the house to himself, and maybe it's something of the paranoia that he feels developing from being alone so much, but he swears that people are following him.

It's a pretty wide variety. He thinks he sees a hooded man lurking outside of the bookstore one night, and the next day, there's a small group of girls who seem to be trying to act as though they aren't loitering, waiting for something.

Harry doesn't say anything. He doesn't want to interact with anyone who might get him into any more bizarre shit than what already happens to him.

Today though, he's going to work, and it's his job to open the store and set it up. When he gets there, someone is already leaning against the storefront, seemingly waiting for it to open. Harry's early - he knows that the store isn't supposed to be open to the public yet, and he still has forty-five minutes to get set up for business hours. But this guy is standing there, a tall and lanky boy around his age with red hair who doesn't quite seem to know what to do with his hands, and as Harry approaches, he looks up, as though he's been anticipating his arrival for quite some time.

"Hey," he begins, but Harry cuts him off.

"Look, mate, I'm sorry, but we're not open for business yet, come back at nine." He knows he's being rude, but at this point, he doesn't care.

Harry opens the door, squeezes through, and shuts it again, locking it behind him, leaving the guy on the doorstep with his mouth slightly open, looking a little confused.

He begins to go about his business for opening the store, glancing up every so often. From his position at the counter where he's setting up a cash register, he can still see the red-headed guy standing there, except now he's been joined by a shorter girl with a mass of curly, bushy brown hair. Through the glass, Harry thinks he hears  _he wouldn't even talk to me, Hermione_ , to which the girl replies,  _honestly, Ron, did you even try?_

Ron makes a spluttering noise of protest and Hermione rolls her eyes. She moves past Ron to read the sign posted with their hours, and sighs. "Ron, they aren't open yet, of course he wouldn't talk to you, he's busy. Come on." She grabs him by the arm and pulls him away.

Honestly, Harry knows that's not going to be the last that he hears from them, but he tries to hope so for the hour and a half that it takes for them to show up again.

It's almost ten in the morning by the time they return, wandering into the bookstore and acting as though they're going to buy something, like the literature is the only reason that they're here.

Harry doesn't feel threatened by them, though, not in the slightest. They don't give him the same foreboding feeling in the pit of his stomach that he gets when he wakes up from one of his nightmares or the way he felt when he saw the hooded man the other day.

He doesn't trust them, but for some reason, he doesn't think that they're anything he should be afraid of.

Harry watches them browse around the store for a bit, pretending not to notice how they're clearly whispering to each other about him on the other side of the room. It's a pretty small establishment, he doesn't know why they think he can't hear them.

Finally, when Hermione comes up and hands him a book that she wants to buy, he checks out her purchase as normal, but when he's handing it back to her, he says, "So are either of you going to tell me why you're acting as though you know something about me, or am I just going to have to wait until I inevitably get kidnapped?"

Ron, who's leaning against the counter at this point, lets out a shrill, obviously fake laugh that Harry assumes is meant to cover the fact that their behavior has been exposed. "What - what makes you say that?"

Hermione shoots him a look but speaks directly to Harry. "I'm Hermione Granger, this is Ron Weasley. Harry nods as though he hadn't already picked that up from their conversation outside earlier.

"I'm Harry," Harry replies.

"I know," Hermione says, pointing to his nametag. "Look, you should just know that you're not alone, and there's more to the world. There's a lot that you need to know. Here," she hands him a piece of paper with an address written on it, "meet us there when your shift is over. We'll answer your questions then."

Harry takes the paper and tucks it in the pocket of his shirt without looking at it. "Why the  _fuck_ do you think I'm going to meet some strangers somewhere when you haven't told me  _anything_ about what it is that you want to talk to me about?"

Ron looks exasperated. "Mate, can you just. Come on."

"Why are you acting like you know me? I've never seen you before, but you're acting like you know who I am! Don't be a dick, answer my questions -" Harry's nearly shouting at this point, the frustration inside of him close to boiling over, but he cuts himself off as the door opens again, the telltale jingle of the door bringing his voice automatically to a customer service-friendly murmur. "Just give me a little bit to go on."

Hermione and Ron exchange a glance, and then Ron starts speaking, very low and very fast.

"Look, has anything ever happened to you that you couldn't explain? Like, no matter how hard you tried you were never able to figure out why shit happened the way that it did?"

"How do you -" Harry begins, but Ron isn't finished, and the next sentence tumbles out of his mouth like it's what he's been dying to say all along.

"Harry, you're a wizard."

None of them speak for a minute or two; Ron and Hermione are standing there with bated breath, as though waiting for Harry to embrace them or say something revolutionary or prepare himself to join whatever cult it is that they seem to be a part of. Harry, however, is silent because he just doesn't fucking know what words he should let come out of his mouth first.

Finally, the words that do are, "You're fucking insane."

"Harry -" Hermione begins, trying to take a step forward, but the counter is in the way and she stops after knocking her hip on the corner of it.

"No," Harry replies, shaking his head and backing up. "Look, I've had a lot of weird shit happen to me in my life, but this is by far the most unwanted. Did you think - did you think I was gonna just sit here and listen to this delusion while I'm at work? I have better things to do, thanks for your business, bye, see you never." He says all of this as he's herding them towards the door, pushing them not at all gently, and ignoring their protests as they reach the entrance to the establishment.

"Mate, come on," Ron tries, but Harry's heard enough for one day.

"It was really nice to meet you, have a nice day, leave me alone," he says, steamrollering over anything that Ron or Hermione might have to say, and shuts the door behind them.

Harry watches them walk away after a minute or two, conversing with each other intently as they do. He looks away, back to the books he's reorganizing, but out of the corner of his eye, he swears he sees them grasp hands, and Hermione turns on her heel and both of them seemingly wink out of existence.

By the time he actually looks up to get a solid view of where they were/are, they're gone.

Harry hates it, but he's intrigued.

He pulls the paper out of his shirt pocket, and reads the words written on it in a narrow, loopy handwriting.

_The headquarters to the Order of the Phoenix can be found at Number 12, Grimmauld Place._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry opens his mind and meets some new friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, comments and kudos are very much appreciated!!! <3 i'm particularly proud of my characterization so far. i've already written quite a bit, so i'm just going to continue posting it every few days until i run out of content. i hope you like it!!

Harry finishes his shift by four that afternoon, and after he's clocked out and said a short goodbye to his manager, he finds himself just wandering the streets of London. It's pretty aimless, and he thinks about just getting on the tube and riding the trains until his mind is completely blank of everything except the jostling hum of the engines.

Right when he decides that this is what he wants to do to pass the rest of the afternoon, he turns a corner and hears a familiar voice.

"So, did you read the note?"

Harry jumps, turning extremely quickly and almost whacking Ron in the face out of some ill-formed action of self-defense. He lowers his now-clenched fists as soon as he realizes who it is, and immediately groans. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

It takes him a moment, but he realizes that Ron is not alone, this time accompanied not by Hermione, but by a very pretty girl probably six inches shorter than him with the same red hair and general facial expression and a boy close to his height with tousled brown hair, wearing a sweater vest with his hands tucked in his pockets. "Who're they?" Harry asks, avoiding answering Ron's question.

"Oh, this is my sister Ginny, and this is our friend Neville."

"Longbottom," Neville adds, supplying his surname.

"That's unfortunate," Harry replies without thinking, and immediately winces. "Sorry, that was -"

"Don't be a dick," Ginny cuts in easily. "Not everyone has an easy name like Potter."

It takes Harry a minute to realize that everyone here also seems to know more about him than he does, they fucking know his last name, but he doesn't even have the energy to be mad about it at this point; honestly if Ron and Hermione had known everything about him earlier, odds are that their friends knew all the same information. He shouldn't be surprised anymore, not at this point of his life.

After all, they'd fucking told him that he was a wizard not eight hours ago. Why should he expect any semblance of normalcy?

It's for this reason that he doesn't even fucking say anything about the fact that his last name and probably the intimate details about his life seem to be common knowledge to this group of teenagers. Instead, he just asks, "So is giving me an address with a super cryptic sentence and expecting me to know what it means a wizard thing, or are you actually going to elaborate on the intimate details? I mean, I don't have anything going on, I'd  _love_ to wander the streets looking for 12 Grimmauld Place, let's fucking do it."

Ginny looks exasperated. "What did I  _just_ say about being a dick." It isn't a question.

"Sorry I'm not being super fucking nice, I've had  _quite_ the day," Harry shoots back.

Ron seems to step into the role of mediator at this moment, moving forward a bit so that he's almost taking a position between Harry and Ginny as though he's expecting them to start physically fighting.

"I didn't expect him to swear so much," Neville says from behind both of them, as though he's narrating this entire interaction, as though Harry can't hear him.

"He's gonna get along  _great_ with Malfoy," Ginny replies, and Neville snorts.

Ron adds, "Yeah, they're either gonna kill each other or actually like each other, I don't know which is a worse prospect." To Harry, he says, "Look, I know we're asking a lot of you, but can you maybe just try and listen to what we have to say?"

Harry crosses his arms. "You mean I'm supposed to listen to you when you tell me that magic is real and I'm a wizard, and the shitty things that have happened to me over the course of the past fifteen years have been because of magic."

There's a pause, then Neville says, "Uh, yeah, basically."

Harry narrows his eyes.

He could just leave. He could walk away right now and tell them to fuck off and leave him alone, hell, he could even go so far as to file restraining orders against them. From the information he's been given, he knows their first and last names, as well as the address that they all seem to live at. He could do it. He probably  _should_ do it.

But something in him is screaming at him, something small hiding in the deepest part of his chest, the part of him that's been aching for as long as he can remember, the part that's been longing for somewhere or someone that made him feel like he  _belonged_ , the part of him that comes alight when he remembers even the smallest detail about his parents.

That little flame inside of his chest is what's telling him that he can't just back out of this, he can't run from this like he ran from the Dursleys, like he's run from his ex-friends who tried to get close enough to him that he'd actually share how he felt about the bad things that had happened to him, like he runs from everything that he's scared of in his life.

Harry speaks then, before he's even really made a solid decision in his mind, and says, "Prove it."

The three teenagers in front of him glance at each other, then Ron says, "Come on," and grabs Harry's arm, pulling him towards the nearest underground station.

They get on the train and ride it for a few stops, and it's a bit of a high traffic time, so they all end up squeezed against each other in a corner of the car, Ron keeping up a near constant ramble of narration. Harry can barely hear him, but he's kind of forced to listen, trapped between Ron and Ginny, with Neville on Ron's other side.

"...we thought we'd never find you, mate, we've been looking for a solid two weeks. It wasn't until Hermione thought of searching for you through Muggle ways that we were even able to figure out that you existed -"

"Ron, he doesn't know what any of this means, you have to explain it to him."

"I'm  _getting_ there, Gin, god, let me tell the story."

"What's a Muggle?"

"A non-magical person. You know, what you still think you are."

"Should we really be talking about this on the tube?"

"Remember what Sirius told us last week, Neville? The Muggles never fucking listen, anyway."

"Ron, I  _saw_ you cast  _Muffliato_ , don't act like you're some sort of genius in espionage."

"Wait, what's  _Muffliato_?" Harry interjects, turning to Ginny, who's leaned across him to expose her brother.

"It's a spell that when it's cast on you all you hear is a buzzing in your ears. The Muggles can't hear our conversation."

Harry raises one eyebrow but doesn't object.

Ginny notices, adding, "What, you're not gonna fight me on that? I'm astonished."

"Nah, I figured since we're already on our way for you to prove your -" Harry raises his hands - with some difficulty, seeing as how tightly they're all squeezed together - and makes air quotes, "- _magic_ to me, you might as well show me that spell there, too."

"You know, for someone who's actually a wizard himself, you sure are a fucking skeptic."

Harry reaches out with one finger and touches the strand of Ginny's hair that had fallen onto his shoulder and says, "You'd think that since you're the ginger, you'd be the Scully in this situation."

Ginny scrunches her eyebrows. "Who the fuck is Scully?"

"You've never seen  _The X-Files_?"

Ron jumps in at that, saying, "Hermione says that most Muggle technology doesn't work around magic, we don't have, uh, what are they called. Tell visions."

"Televisions," Harry corrects, and Ron snaps his fingers at the word.

"That's it. We don't have those."

"Well, you're missing out. It's pretty good, even if it is about American government agents."

The other teens make noises of interest, and right then, the train starts to slow, and Neville says, "I think this is our stop."

They're the only ones getting off at the stop - Harry doesn't even think he hears it announced over the loudspeaker, and the other passengers don't even seem to notice the four of them getting off or the doors opening or anything. Harry glances around, and in response to his confusion, Ron says, "There's a lot of things like this in big cities. It's one of those places that only magical people can see, like the Leaky Cauldron."

"The what?"

"Oh, shit, I keep forgetting. We'll take you there, don't worry. It's a pub."

"Oh."

They walk out into the empty underground station, and to Harry's surprise, it's completely empty. He doesn't mean the kind of empty where there's just a few people hanging around waiting for the next train; it's so empty that they're the only people in there, and when the train rumbles away, it falls completely silent.

Harry's fairly certain, judging from the feeling buzzing in his chest, that he's either about to get murdered or see something incredible, and he knows that either way, whatever happens is going to change his life.

"Why's it so empty?" he says after a minute, rather than voicing his concerns about possible murder.

"Wizards don't really use Muggle transport," Ginny answers, making her way over to a bench and sitting down. "Usually the tube is only used for like, getting to the visitor's entrance to the Ministry. Ron, are you gonna send a message to the others, or Apparate, or what?"

"I'm going, I'm going," he replies, adjusting the backpack on his shoulders. "Hermione showed me how to do the Patronus message thing, but I don't think I've mastered it, I'll just have to ask her to show me again. I'll just Apparate."

"Make sure you get right on the step," Neville says, and Ron gives him a kind of two fingered salute.

"I always do."

"Yeah, okay, Mr. Splinch."

Ron fluidly switches from his two fingered salute to Neville to a one fingered gesture at his sister, who snorts in laughter from where she's sitting. He turns on his heel and, just like Harry had seen earlier, pops right out of existence with a loud  _snap_ sound.

"Holy  _fuck_ ," Harry says, eyes widening.

"Oh, he believes us now, Neville," Ginny says mildly. Neville laughs.

Within five minutes, there's another loud  _pop_ and Ron's back, this time followed, in another series of  _pop_ s, by three other people, all looking to be around the same age. Harry recognizes one of them as Hermione and gives the other two a quick once-over before any of them say anything.

At first, he wonders if they've been joined by another set of siblings; the new boy and girl both have the same extremely light blond hair and pale skin, but he notices from the set of their features that that's about all they physically have in common. The girl is shorter and softer and seems to have a dreamy expression in her eyes, while the boy is taller and sharper and looks as though he'd rather be anywhere but here.

"Harry!" Hermione says, stepping forward in a rush, and making a motion like she wants to embrace him, but thinks better of it. "I'm so glad you came!"

"Well, I. I wanted to see some proof, so I guess I didn't really have a choice," he answers, and she smiles at him. Ron clears his throat.

"So, uh, mate, I know how you're particular about knowing who you're talking to -"

"It's not that weird of a concept, Ron, most people like to know who they meet."

"- so we should probably introduce the last two in our little group. These are Luna and Malfoy."

"We have more than just one name, Weasley," the boy - Harry's assuming this is Malfoy - says in a cutting tone.

"Well, with a first name like yours, I was assuming you didn't want to look like a fucking idiot immediately, but I guess you didn't think about that, judging from the way you dressed."

Malfoy splutters at that, looking down at his outfit. "What's wrong with my clothes?"

"Did you rob Sirius' dad's closet or something, that shit is terrible," Ginny adds, and Ron laughs.

"There aren't that many clothes in the house! It was laundry day!"

"I think you look nice, Draco," Luna says, and her voice is so calming that it seems to tone down the entire teasing dynamic. "You should dress the way you want to. It's very nice to meet you, Harry," she adds, seamlessly bridging one topic of conversation to another.

"Nice to meet you, too," Harry replies. "I didn't catch your last name."

"It's Lovegood. His full name is Draco Malfoy, in case you didn't hear."

"Thanks," Harry says. "Nice to meet you."

Draco nods a little, looking apprehensive. "Potter."

A bit of silence falls on the group, as though none of them quite know what to say, until Hermione says, "Ron said you wanted proof?"

All the eyes in the group focus on Harry, and he manages, "Uh, yeah, I mean, I think the disappearing and reappearing thing is a bit of a start, but I just. Wanted to see a bit more than that before I do whatever it is that you want me to."

It takes a moment, all of the other teens glancing around at each other, before Hermione pulls out what Harry can only assume is a wand from the waistband of her jeans - he later learns that it was tucked in one of her belt loops - and gives him a gentle smile before saying, " _Avis_ ," and gesturing with her wand towards the ceiling of the empty station.

Harry's half expecting for absolutely nothing to happen, but in the blink of an eye, there's a burst of color exploding from the end of Hermione's wand, and three tiny, yellow, twittering birds are flying towards the ceiling. "Holy fuck," he says again, watching them make their way to the rafters.

"Eloquent," Ginny deadpans from behind them on the bench.

They stand in a circle for probably close to an hour, just casting spells that come to mind, not explaining them or sharing what they're doing, just making the room hum with magic. Hermione makes a silver otter come out of her wand for a moment or two, Ron flicks his wand upwards and sends Draco flying to the ceiling and hanging there by his ankle for a moment before he comes crashing down, stopping just before he hits the floor by a quick levitation by Luna, Neville makes plants grow out of the cracks in the tiles in the wall, Draco conjures what looks like just a wood block solely for the purposes of Ginny making it explode over the tracks.

The whole time, Harry is absolutely mystified.

When they finish, Hermione asks, "Well?" with hope in her eyes.

Harry, who's sitting cross-legged on the floor at this point, glasses flashing from the colored sparks still dancing around the room, meets her eyes and just says, "I love magic."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry learns the truth of what happened to his parents and deals with a late-night altercation.

"So, you all know each other from school?"

They're sitting at a corner booth in a fast food restaurant, Harry gesturing with a French fry, squeezed between the window and Luna. There are far too many of them to fit into a booth made for four, but they're managing to make it work, with their knees knocking into each other under the table.

Harry's very aware of Ginny's ankle crossed over his from her position directly across from him, and the way she is intentionally not making prolonged eye contact with him.

"Yeah," Ron says, mouth full.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, that's  _disgusting_ , Ron," Hermione interjects, and Ron narrows his eyes at her. Pointedly, he swallows, then continues speaking.

"Happy?"

"Marginally more so," she answers, and he looks back at Harry.

"We all go to Hogwarts. Or, we did. We're not going back in the fall."

"Oh?" Harry takes a bite of one of his chicken nuggets. "Why not?"

There’s a pause, as though no one really knows how to broach the subject. Finally, Draco, who had refused to sit in the cramped booth and had instead moved a chair from one of the freestanding tables and positioned it at the end, says, "The wizarding world has pretty much gone to shit, and that's largely because of a very powerful and very evil Dark wizard."

Harry pauses. "Did I literally just hear you capitalize the word dark in the way you just said it?"

"Why are you the way that you are?" Draco asks.

"I didn’t receive a lot of love as a child," Harry snipes back. "I don't know if you know this, but my parents are dead."

"We…do know this, Harry, everyone does," Hermione says, leaning forward so that she can see Harry better. She's on the very end of the table on the side opposite him, next to Ron, who's next to Ginny.

"What do you mean?"

"The Dark wizard. He's the one that killed them."

" _What_?" Harry can hardly believe what he's hearing. All his life he's been told that his parents were killed in a tragic car accident, bad weather or a drunk driver or some combination of the two, and he never questioned it, because why else would he have lost both of them on the same night? What reason would his aunt and uncle have had to lie to him about this? It had been no secret to him that they'd harbored no fondness for his parents – god, he didn't think that they’d ever even so much as told him their names, he'd had to find that out for himself – but he had been sure that at least they wouldn't have lied to him about this.

"Didn't you ever wonder how you got that scar?" Luna asks next to him, and Harry reaches up reflexively to touch it.

"They – they told me that it was in the crash, that there was bad weather or something and that they crashed the car and I was okay but they were killed."

Draco scoffs a little from the end of the table. "Please, your parents were magical, there's no way a car crash would kill them. Did they even own a car? No one really does."

"My dad does."

"Your dad's a fucking nutter, Weasley, everyone knows that."

"Shut it, Malfoy," Hermione cuts in, drawing the focus back to Harry. "Harry, that scar's the mark of a powerful curse rebounding. No one really knows what happened that night – well, Dumbledore had some theories – but the Dark wizard killed your parents and when he tried to kill you, it didn't work, it bounced back and hit him. Essentially, it destroyed him for a really long time, and that's why you're famous in the wizarding world. But he's back now, and that's why everything's dangerous again."

"What the hell," Harry mumbles, staring vacantly at the table. "What the _hell_."

Luna reaches out and touches his arm lightly, gently. "I know it's hard to wrap your head around. You've had a big day."

Harry doesn't know what to say. He has no _fucking_ idea what to say. He doesn't even know what to feel. For a moment, it's all blank, a feeling of vast nothingness hovering behind his eyes, making him have a bit of difficulty breathing.

He thinks he hears Neville say, _is he okay?_ and the feeling beginning to bubble in his chest is one that he's finally able to identify. It's anger.

For the past almost sixteen years of his life, he's had no one to talk to about his parents dying, he's had no explanation other than a vague idea that they were killed in something that was completely uncontrollable. He never knew more than that, but now – now there's an answer.

Someone took his entire life away from him. Someone took his parents and his home and a life where he could have grown up going to Hogwarts and feeling safe and being _loved_ away from him. Someone made that decision and they ripped away everything that was ever important to him at one point in his life, and they left him with this fucking hell of a future.

Harry doesn't care that this Dark wizard was destroyed for a period of time. He doesn't care that whatever happened when he was a baby made him famous. He doesn't fucking care about anything right now other than the fact that whoever this wizard was, he took away the only people that he knows loved him at one point.

He hears Hermione say, "Harry?" very softly, and he becomes aware that he's still looking down at the table, his thumb punched through the center of a chicken nugget from how hard he was clenching his hands.

"What's his name?" Harry asks quietly, not looking up.

"What?" Hermione asks, and Harry meets her eyes.

"His name. The wizard who killed them. Who is he?"

"Mate –" Ron begins, reaching out across the table, but Harry doesn't want anyone to tell him anything else other than who this monster is.

" _Ron, just tell me his fucking name_!"

Ron glances at Hermione, who says, "No one really likes to say his name, but it's. It's Voldemort."

There's a noticeable wince around the table when she says that, but Harry doesn't have a reaction. Not a physical one at least.

Slowly, he puts the pieces together in his head.

"You came to find me because you need me to do it again, don't you?" he says, voice flatter than he thinks it's ever been. "Whatever it was that I did when I was a baby, you need me to do it again. Because he's back."

"No," Ginny answers, and Harry looks at her instead of Hermione. "We came to find you because he's been hunting for you for years. When you moved out of your aunt and uncle's house, you made it easier for him. It was just a matter of time before he found you and took you."

"But _why_ ," Harry asks, leaning back in the booth as far as the cramped space allows him. "Why would he want me, I was a baby then, and I don't know _anything_ more about magic now than I did then. Why would he come for me and my family?"

"Sirius told me –" Draco begins, but the door to the restaurant bangs open and two burly men in construction uniforms make their way in. Previously, they'd been the only people in the building, so in response, he lowers his voice. "He said there was a prophecy. That's why You-Know-Who went after Harry's parents in the first place. Something about Harry being able to defeat him. He got freaked out and decided to make a preemptive strike, take out Harry before he got old enough to learn magic and destroy him."

"That’s –" Harry says, turning to get a better look at Draco, and in that moment notices the construction men looking at them in the mirror above the cash registers, one of them pulling a long, thin object from the deep pocket of his overalls –

"Shit!" he shouts, and the others snap their heads in the direction that he’s looking.

"Harry, get down!" Ron yells immediately, reaching across the table and pushing Harry underneath it while the rest of them clamber out of the booth.

He can't see much from his position underneath the table; all he's aware of are bangs and flashes of light and Ron fluidly and violently cursing, but within a few minutes there's the telltale thump of bodies hitting the floor, and he emerges from his hiding spot.

Harry knows that he was underneath the table because he'd be useless in a fight – he doesn't know magic, he wouldn't be able to help at all, and he’s probably the target – but he still feels a little stupid about cowering there while the other six teens in the restaurant handled the intruders.

"Are you okay?" Neville asks when Harry walks over to the rest of them, and he just nods, trying to brush off their concern for him. They're all looking at him as though he's fragile, as though something’s about to snap in him, and he gets it. It's the look that people always gave him when something weird – something he supposes he could now call magic – would happen when he was growing up.

"I’m fine. Are you guys okay?"

There are general murmurs of assent, and Harry steps forward to where Draco and Hermione are crouching near the prone bodies of their attackers. "Who are they?" he asks, and the two of them look up at him.

Draco says, "I suppose you wouldn't know, but You-Know-Who has quite the following. They're called Death Eaters. These ones are Dolohov and Rowle. They've dined with my parents several times."

"Bastards," Ron says behind them, under his breath, and Draco makes a humming noise of assent.

"What’re we gonna do with them?" Ginny asks. Harry looks back at her, noticing the cut running through her left eyebrow. He guesses that it's from when one of the tables exploded. Her jaw is set and when she glances at Ron, Harry’s struck by how much they look alike in that moment, despite how different their features are.

"Well, we know what they’d do with us if we were in their position, don’t we?" Ron replies, gripping his wand a little tighter.

"No, Ron," Neville says, giving him a look. "We can’t be like them."

"We should wipe their memories," Luna says, and Harry realizes that she's been using this entire conversation as an opportunity to fix the furniture and set the room back to the condition that it had been in before the fight. "It’s the best option."

Harry becomes aware that everyone's looking at him then, as though they're expecting him to have some kind of an opinion on this, like he's some kind of leader. "Y-yeah, I guess so. Whoever's the best at it should do it then?"

"That's me," Hermione says, standing. There's a little shake in her voice that Harry isn't sure anyone else really hears, but her hand is steady when she holds out her wand and performs the spell. _Obliviate_ , Harry takes note, and within two minutes, it’s done.

They leave the Death Eaters in the center of the room, unconscious, and step outside. Harry finds himself taking deep breaths, almost like gulps, of the night air, trying to get a handle on what exactly is happening to him.

It's been quite the fucking day.

"We have to go somewhere safe," Hermione says once they've all gathered their wits. "We shouldn't go back to Grimmauld Place, not tonight. We don't know if they're watching, and now that Dumbledore's dead, we – we're all Secret Keepers, we can't risk anyone finding the house."

"You know what we have to do first, right?" Harry surprises everyone, including himself, by speaking. It's the last thing he thought he’d be able to do right now, to take charge of the situation. But his instinct in this moment is to do the first thing that will be able to make him stop being a fucking dead weight in instances like the fight that just happened.

It'll also give him an edge against Voldemort, but that's only half of what he's worried about right now.

"What?" Ron asks next to him, and Harry sighs.

"I need to get a wand."

Draco lets out a short little laugh at that, and when everyone looks at him, he just says, "Can't believe we're going school shopping at a time like this. Should be fun."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and the pals go to Diagon Alley, we see some new characters, developments occur.

Harry wakes up with a crick in his neck and the massive need to pee.

He also becomes aware that he's on the floor in some kind of nest of blankets with six other people, and someone's arm is over his neck.

After identifying who the arm belongs to (Neville) and carefully extricating himself from all the limbs surrounding him, Harry stands and carefully makes his way to the bathroom, just down the hall from where they'd all been sleeping.

For a moment, it feels like he just made a lot of new friends while out last night and they all had a sleepover together, but once he shuts the door and lets himself think and remember, he knows that's not the case.

It all comes rushing back to him as he's washing his hands, including the more elusive details about what exactly happened last night after the fight in the restaurant. Once Harry had said that he needed a wand, Ron's suggestion was to go to his brothers' flat in a place called Diagon Alley, and the general consensus was that he was right. There had been a few moments of hot debate when it came to whether or not they should disguise Harry, but Harry pointed out that no one in the wizarding community really knew what he looked like, since he hadn't been around them at all, so it was likely that it was safe.

They'd decided to just Apparate - which Harry was beginning to associate with the quick and easy appearance to and disappearance from places - directly into Fred and George's (Ron and Ginny's older twin brothers, Harry had been told) flat, just above their shop. Since Ron and Ginny had been there before many a time, they figured that it would just be easiest for them to do Side-Along Apparition and to take everyone with them in two trips between both of them.

Harry had been hearing the word  _easy_ used a lot in this conversation, so he was expecting an instantaneous journey that would be as quick and painless as blinking. What he experienced was the complete opposite.

Just thinking about it now makes him want to throw up. It had felt like he was being forcibly squeezed through a garden hose, and then unceremoniously dumped into someone's living room. He'd had to force himself to maintain control of his nausea.

One of the twins had been sitting on the couch in the living room. It was late enough at night that the store was already closed, so they were both home. Despite four people - Harry had come in the first wave with Ron, Hermione, and Neville - just suddenly appearing in front of him, the young man on the couch seemed to be completely unfazed.

"Ah, Ronnie, I didn't know you were bringing friends over."

"Hey, George," Ron muttered, and within five seconds, there was a  _pop_ and Ginny's group appeared.

"Oh, and Ginny's here, too, wonderful!" George had said, standing. He had noticed Harry, and looked to his siblings, a bit of a confused expression on his face. "Who's this?"

"Uh," Ron began.

"This is Harry," Ginny had answered, and George's head had snapped to look at her directly. "Potter."

"No  _shit_ ," George had said, grinning. "No  _fucking_ way, nice to meet you."

"Likewise," Harry had answered, smiling back. He couldn't help it, he didn't think anyone had ever been that excited to see him before.

"OI, FRED, GET IN HERE," George had shouted over his shoulder without warning, and Harry leaned back a little from the noise. "RON AND GINNY ARE HERE AND THEY BROUGHT THEIR COOL FRIENDS PLUS HARRY POTTER AND THAT SLICK GIT MALFOY."

"Really?" Draco had asked under his breath. "It's been two years." Ron snickered.

Fred had come in and had much of the same reaction as George, and Harry spent most of the ensuing evening trying to determine which of the twins was which.

Hermione had reminded everyone that she packed toothbrushes in their backpacks and then pulled out an extra one for Harry before conjuring a backpack for him out of thin air - he spent a solid fifteen minutes just examining it before finally coming to terms with the fact that it was real - while Fred and George pulled out blankets and some pillows and just sort of threw them on the floor in a jumbled mess.

"We don't have a lot of furniture, seeing as it's just us, so you kids have the floor today. Be good," Fred or George said (Harry still had no idea which was which) before continuing, "Ronald, Ginevra, can we speak to you in the other room, please?"

The remaining five of them spent the next few minutes arranging their sleeping spaces and trying not to listen to the family argument happening in the other room, but from the volume, it was hard not to. Harry heard  _you need to tell Mum you're alright, she's been asking us and we don't have any answers for her_ and  _we can't tell her anything, that's dangerous_ and  _she's already losing her shit about the wedding, and now you're not coming? Neither of you? What the fuck are we gonna tell Bill and Fleur_ and  _you know they'd understand_. The conversation got a little quieter from there, and within a few minutes, everyone had traipsed back into the living room.

"Well, goodnight," one of the twins had said, and the other had flicked his wand gently, causing the lights to dim to just barely glowing.

"Sleep tight, don't let the Slytherins bite."

"They're never gonna let that go, are they," Draco asked the ceiling, and Luna had replied, "It's unlikely."

"Great."

Harry was sure that there had been some whispered conversations and giggling, but he'd been so exhausted from the events of the night that he'd passed out almost immediately. He's surprised, but thankful that none of his shit dreams visited him last night.

Now here he is, in the bathroom of near-strangers, waiting for his new friends who are also near-strangers to get up so that they can go shopping for a wand? Because he's apparently a wizard?

Despite all the proof that he's seen over the past twenty-four hours, all he has in his mind now are doubts.

Just as his mind is beginning to become rife with anxiety, there's a gentle knock on the door.

"Harry?" Hermione's voice floats through the wood, softly, as though she's worried about startling him. "Are you okay? We have to get going soon."

Harry clears his throat and straightens up. "Yeah, I'm - I'm fine, I was just cleaning my glasses." He opens the door, revealing Hermione looking up at him with a bit of a worried expression. "I'm okay, let's go."

Hermione still looks a little skeptical, but she steps aside and lets him pass.

When he gets back into the living room, he takes note of how everyone else is awake, going through their bags (Luna) or rolling up blankets (Neville) or still yawning and stretching (Ron). Harry passes the kitchen on his way to snag his backpack from where it still sits on the floor, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of movement and hears, "Think fast, Harry!" Before he's really even processed what's happening, he turns and snatches what he thinks is some kind of granola bar out of the air before it hits him in the head.

"Nice," Fred says from the kitchen. "You know, it's a shame that you never went to Hogwarts, he probably would've been a hell of a good Seeker. We could've used him on the team."

"How do you know he would've been in Gryffindor?" Luna pipes up from the other side of the room, and Fred scoffs good-naturedly.

"I have a sense about these things, lovely Lovegood. Just like I know that Ron hasn't had his first kiss yet and that Hermione has a mean right hook."

"That's a fucking lie!" Ron exclaims hotly, and George, who's standing behind him, ruffles his hair.

"Is it," George replies, and Ron glares at him.

" _Anyway_ ," Hermione says, coming into the room after Harry, "we really should get going, we need to get in and out of Ollivanders before the streets start getting crowded."

"Like there's going to be any people shopping today or any other day, everyone's scared shitless, they're just going to order everything by owl post," Draco, lounging on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, says. "We could leave in two hours and the shops are still going to be just as empty."

"You know, Malfoy, that's  _exactly_ the kind of attitude that'll prevent you from being a successful businessman in the future," George says, and Draco scowls. "And take your feet off the table."

"You know,  _Weasley_ , some of us don't  _have_ to be businessmen to be successful."

"You're just making yourself sound like even more of a prick, mate," Harry chimes in, before anyone can send a fist flying at anyone else's face, and Draco flicks his narrowed eyes over to him.

"What the fuck do you know about it?" he snaps, and Harry raises his eyebrows.

"Yikes."

Ginny, who Harry notices in that exact moment was missing, opens the door that leads to the lower level of the building - i.e., the store - and sticks her head inside, saying, "Hey, people are starting to shop outside, do you need to open the store or something?"

"Oh, little sis, that's what we have employees for," Fred answers. He pauses, then continues, "But you lot really should start heading out if you need to get some shopping done. Hermione's right, of course."

"Thanks," Hermione replies, sounding a little surprised. "Actually, do either of you have a cloak with a hood that we can borrow?"

"Hermione, you're constantly underestimating the sheer volume of assorted items we have in this building and in our possession. Of course we have a cloak with a hood, you could've at least made it something of a challenge." George leaves the room, presumably intending to return with a cloak.

"Why would we need that?" Neville asks.

"Just in case someone recognizes Harry."

"I've never been here before, why would they recognize me?"

"Mate, I've seen a picture of your parents at Sirius' house, you look a  _hell_ of a lot like your dad, and he was pretty well known," Ron answers, and Harry considers that for a minute.

He's spent his whole life looking at himself in the mirror, trying to find some semblance of familiarity in his features, just looking for  _something_ that he recognizes. The Dursleys look nothing like him, not even in the slightest - the only thing that he has to go on that even tells him that they're related is the way his aunt's mouth would twist when he asked about his parents. He could feel that she really was his mother's sister, she just wouldn't tell him anything about them.

Harry's wanted to know, for nearly sixteen years, who his parents were and what they looked like, all he'd known was their names, and to suddenly learn in such an offhand manner that he looks like his father, he looks like his  _father_ , he looks like  _James Potter_ , is suddenly more proof that his parents had really existed and lived than anything he's ever encountered.

It's a lot. There's a little lump in his throat that he fights past as he speaks again.

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's kind of uncanny."

"Huh."

At that moment, George returns with a cloak in a stunning shade of violet, and frankly, Harry would rather run the risk of being recognized than put something so eye-catching on, but Hermione immediately starts talking about how it'll be  _perfect_ to help Harry blend in, so he swallows the words and his pride and puts it on.

Ten minutes later, he and his friends are out on the streets of Diagon Alley, weaving their way between the small knots of people traveling to and from the shops. Looking around, Harry's struck by an overwhelming sense that the area is far more empty than it should be, and that something is fundamentally wrong. The windows of many stores are darkened, doors locked, some signs plastered to storefronts that read  _closed until further notice, stay safe._ The winding road seems like it was a place that used to be so full of life, but now... now it feels like a ghost town.

"What happened here?" Harry asks the person nearest to him, who happens to be Neville.

"Diagon Alley is where everyone shops, really, but since You-Know-Who came back, everyone's really been too scared to do big shopping trips, especially for school. This time of year, it should be the busiest, but a lot of parents are keeping their kids home, so there's less of a crowd shopping for school, and sometimes. You know. People go missing."

"Shit."

"Yeah, shit is right." They pass an ice cream shop, the door hanging off of its hinges at an angle that indicates some kind of blast. "Like right there, they took Florean Fortescue. No one knows why. Probably because he actually talked about fighting back."

Harry frowns. "Don't you have like, a wizard government that will do something?"

Ginny, slightly in front of them, laughs a little. It's not a laugh of amusement. She turns so that she's walking backwards and able to look at Harry straight on while still making progress. "The Ministry of Magic is just like the Muggle government."

"Oh, so completely fucking useless?"

Ginny taps her nose, then points to Harry. "Exactly."

"Stellar."

"We're here," Ron says from the front of the group, and they stop in front of a store.

"Wait," Harry says, and the rest of the teens stop, right before Ron's about to open the door. "I don't have any money."

"Well, mate, technically that's not true," Ron replies, and Harry gives him a quizzical look. "You know, your parents left you a shit ton in their vault at Gringotts, we just can't go in and get it, because then people would know that you were here."

"Oh," Harry murmurs, thinking. "So how am I going to get a wand?"

"Oh, right," Ron says, and Ginny rolls her eyes.

"Our brother Bill works at Gringotts. He was a curse-breaker, but now he works at a desk job because he's getting married soon. We told him we were going to look for you and he went in and got some gold out of your vault for your. It should be more than enough for a while, it's in your bag."

Harry doesn't quite know what to say about that. He's had a vault this whole time, under his name, hidden somewhere in London? For the thousandth time since he learned about this whole aspect of his life that was stolen from him, he feels a little burst of anger at just how  _unfair_ this is. He could've been out of the Dursleys' house years ago.

He shakes off the anger, though, and nods. "Alright then, I guess."

Ron opens the door, and they walk in.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey!! sorry i haven't updated, i've actually had more written for a while but i forgot that i posted this lol. anyway, here's chapter five! thanks for the patience <3

The shop is small and dimly lit, and there seems to be thin layer of dust on every surface inside of it. Walking in, Harry had read a sign that said  _Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C._

"Ollivanders is the best place to go get a wand, Harry," Luna had told him as they entered, and Harry had looked around, in awe of his surroundings. "Mr. Ollivander is very kind, you'll like him."

The store is quiet, but not silent - Harry can feel a palpable hum in the air around him, and it resonates through his entire body. He wonders if it's just him, or if the other feel it too. There are stacks of long, thin boxes all over the store, full of what Harry can only assume are wands.

He's never wanted to have one in his hands more badly than he does in this moment.

There's a little bell on the desk in front of them, and Harry walks up to it, removing his hood as he does so. "Should we ring it?" he asks, looking to his friends for confirmation.

"I suppose so?" Hermione answers, stepping forward. "He might be working, he probably didn't hear us come in."

"How can he, over the muffling effect of the clutter," Draco deadpans from near the door, and Harry doesn't turn around, so the next thing he hears, without seeing, is a smack followed by an indignant, "Ow! What was that for?"

"You're being a dick again," Ron replies easily, and Harry snorts. He reaches out and rings the bell.

After a few moments, they hear a soft voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the shelves of wands say, "I've certainly been expecting you for a long time, Mr. Potter."

Harry can't help it, he jumps a little. He turns and looks in the direction of the voice and sees a very old man with a wild shock of white hair and large silvery eyes walking towards them from between the shelves, a small smile on his face. "You know me?" Harry asks, in almost the same hushed tone. He becomes aware that his friends have backed up, leaving him standing at the counter alone.

"Of course," Mr. Ollivander replies, reaching Harry. He's a small man, shorter than Harry, but even though his voice and manner are subdued, there's something about him that commands the attention of all of the teenagers in the room. "You have your mother's eyes."

"I do?"

"Yes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."

Harry says nothing.

"Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favored it - it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course."

"Of - of course," Harry quickly replies. Mr. Ollivander peers at Harry's scar, and reaches out with a single finger, almost touching it.

"And that's where -" He pauses. Harry can feel the rest of the room waiting with bated breath. "I'm sorry to say that I sold the wand that did it. Thirteen and a half inches. Yew. Very powerful, especially in the wrong hands. If only I'd known what that wand would do..." Mr. Ollivander seems to trail off in thought, before refocusing. He takes in the vast group accompanying Harry and seems to form some sort of resolve.

"Well, Mr. Potter, I can only assume you're here because you need a wand after all these years. A bit late to begin your magical education, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," Harry replies. He's not sure what else to say. Fortunately, he doesn't have to say anything else.

"Harry's aunt and uncle had someone cast a spell that hid them. We think it was some variation of the Fidelius Charm," Hermione interjects, and Mr. Ollivander hums. "Dumbledore was never able to find him, so he couldn't go to school with us."

"Well, these are dark and dangerous times, aren't they," Mr. Ollivander replies. It isn't a question. "So we had best get you a wand."

"That's what we're here for," Harry hears Draco mutter under his breath, and looks over his shoulder to see that he's collapsed dramatically into the spindly chair in the front area.

"Shut up, Malfoy," several voices chorus at once.

Mr. Ollivander takes measurements with a tape measure that moves of its own accord for what feels like at least half an hour, all the while telling Harry facts about wands, like about how no two are alike, and that he'll always get the best results with his own wand, and how the wands that he could get here possibly have cores of either unicorn hair, dragon heartstrings, or phoenix feathers. Once he realizes that the tape measure is assessing the distance between Harry's nostrils, he says, "That's enough," and sets down an armful of boxes on the desk.

"Now, the only way to find which wand is meant for you is to test them out. Here, give this one a try." Harry, feeling a bit nervous, takes it in his hand and, after throwing a skeptical look over his shoulder to his friends - Ron gives him a thumbs-up - and gives it a wave. Mr. Ollivander grabs it out of his hand almost immediately, and they try again.

Soon, there's a pile of discarded wands growing higher and higher every minute, and Harry's feeling increasingly frustrated. Maybe they were all wrong, maybe he  _isn't_ a wizard, maybe none of these wands are right for him.

They reach the bottom of the large stack of wands that Mr. Ollivander had initially pulled out for Harry, and he pauses, hands lingering on the box. "This one - I wonder. A bit of an unusual combination but give it a try. Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple."

Harry takes it in his hands and immediately, everything shifts.

There's a warmth in his fingers that he can feel radiating from the wand itself, and he can sense it, he knows this is  _it_ , this is the tangible proof that he belongs in this world, and he waves the wand, causing a shower of red and gold sparks to cascade out of the tip.

"Wonderful!" Mr. Ollivander exclaims, and Harry spins around to see his friends, a grin on his face. They're all clapping for him, cheering even, an the warmth that Harry feels isn't limited to his fingers anymore.

"Thank you, Mr. Ollivander," Harry says, lowering his wand -  _his_ wand - and holding it in both of his hands, just considering it for a moment. "Thank you, really."

"Of course, my boy, of course," Mr. Ollivander replies, and begins to put the boxes away. "You know, it's curious..." he shakes his head a little, as though deciding not to say what he was originally planning. "Never mind, never mind."

"What's curious?" Harry asks, intrigued.

Mr. Ollivander pauses, then meets Harry's eyes with a solemn expression. "I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr. Potter. Every single wand. It just so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand gave another feather - just one other. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother - why, its brother gave you that scar."

Harry can't really speak, he can barely swallow. "What?" he manages, gripping the handle of his wand a little more firmly in his right hand.

"Yes, thirteen and a half inches. Yew. Curious how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember. I think we can expect great things from you in the near future, Mr. Potter. After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things - terrible, yes, but great."

Harry shivers involuntarily, then reaches into his bag and pulls out the seven gold coins - Ginny helps him, telling him that they're called Galleons - to pay for his wand, and after thanking Mr. Ollivander, the group leaves the store.

After the door shuts behind them, Ron steps up next to Harry, hands tucked in his pockets. "Well, he hasn't changed. I think he's always been a cryptic old geezer."

Harry still doesn't know what to say, he just looks down at the wand in his hand and remains silent. He's on the edge of the group, closest to the middle of the road, and when he looks up, the rest of the group is looking at him with some concern.

"Harry, are you okay?" Ron, who's still the closest to him, asks. Harry opens his mouth to respond, but at that moment, someone crashes into his shoulder, knocking him sideways. Ron grabs his arm and yanks him back, closer to the relative safety of the group, nearly shouting, "Oi, watch it!"

"So sorry, I didn't mean -" a small wizard wearing purple robes and a large top hat begins, before seeing Harry. He gasps. "Are you -"

"No, he's not," Ron snaps, and Harry glances at him. Ron's jaw is set, but he looks nervous. Harry realizes that he forgot to put his hood back on when he left the store, and he quickly raises it. "Come on, mate, let's go."

The rest of the group had already started walking away, so Harry and Ron hurry to catch up with them. Harry becomes aware that Ron is muttering a near constant stream of curse words under his breath and judging from the position of his hand in his jacket pocket, Harry thinks that Ron's grip is tight on his wand.

"What's going on?" Hermione asks when they rejoin the group. "Are you okay?"

"Uh," Harry begins, but Ron cuts him off.

"We're royally fucked, that's what's going on," Ron says, pulling Harry away from the outskirts and into the center of the group. He then proceeds to guide all of them off of the main road, into a little dingy alley. "Someone bumped into Harry and knew exactly who he was. We're completely fucked."

"Shit," Ginny says, summing up basically their whole situation.

"Maybe it won't spread," Harry says, more out of hope than anything else.

"Nah, it was Dedalus Diggle, my dad always said that he had a big mouth," Ron says, and the general emotion of the group seems to deflate. "We need to get the fuck out of here, and quick."

"Where should we -" Neville begins, when there's a pop behind them and a voice speaks, very quickly and in a tone indicating extreme annoyance.

"Draco, you little shit, thank  _fuck_ I finally found you, what the shit do you think this is? You can't just wander off like this, I'm supposed to take care of you because you're parents are assholes, are you  _kidding_ me with the sneaking off shit? Merlin's hairy asshole, you could have been killed."

Harry turns around to see the person who's Apparated in and sees a handsome man in his thirties with long, dark hair, looking as though he'd rather be doing anything but reprimanding Draco.

"Hi, Sirius," Draco says, and the rest of them all start talking at once, trying to shift the blame.

"I don't wanna hear it. You can give me your bullshit excuses back at the house," Sirius says, raising his hands, and the rest of them fall silent. "Who's this?" he asks, gesturing at Harry.

"I'm -" Harry begins, taking off his hood, but it's like it's that motion that makes Sirius actually focus on him; his eyes widen and his mouth opens a little. There's something in his expression that Harry can't identify at first, but after a moment, he thinks it's something between disbelief and heartache.

Sirius closes his mouth, swallows, and says, "James?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so here's when sirius comes in!!!!! i love him
> 
> recognizable dialogue from this scene is pretty much verbatim from sorcerer's stone, the scene when harry gets his wand, obviously.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally my favorite boy is here ,, i love sirius ,,,,,, a lot ,, anyway this is the first time i've actually written post-azkaban/nineties marauders so ,, hope it's good
> 
> also i allude to some stuff between draco and sirius, so a little backstory: draco ended up not going back home after like fifth year? sirius was out of azkaban at this point bc he broke out in what would've been poa because of peter, and they actually caught him. since sirius was one of draco's only relatives who was pretty decent, had a house, and didn't have anyone else to take care of, he was volunteered to house his teenage second cousin, so they've been living together for about two years at this point.

"No," says Harry, "I'm Harry."

Sirius almost chokes, then reaches up and runs a hand through his hair. Harry notices that his hand is shaking. "Of course you are."

Harry frowns. "Who are you?"

"Oh, uh. I'm - I'm Sirius Black, I was. I was your dad's best friend, I'm your godfather."

Harry doesn't fucking know what to say. The only thing he can think of is that there's been someone this whole time who could've taken care of him, who could've been there for him, who could've gotten him out of the shit storm that his life had become when he was living with the Dursleys, and yet this moment right here is the first that he's hearing of it.

"You're my godfather?" Harry repeats, his voice soft. They're still in the alleyway, and he can tell that everyone else is feeling a little antsy to move on, but he knows that they aren't going to make him go anywhere until he's ready.

"Yeah," Sirius replies, touching his hair again. Harry thinks that maybe this is something he does when he's nervous. "Yeah, I haven't seen you since - since the night your parents died, Harry, I'm -"

"Why didn't you ever come and get me?" Harry interrupts. He tries his hardest to act firm, but he knows that his voice isn't the most stable. "My life has been shit for the past almost sixteen years, you could've come and gotten me at any point, why didn't you?"

"Well - uh, I was in prison, but that's a long story."

" _What_?"

"I was framed!" Sirius exclaims, throwing his hands in the air. "Look, it was all a misunderstanding, they didn't even let me go to trial -"

"Listen, I'm really glad you guys are meeting now, and that you're able to have this discussion hashing out your family issues, but we need to move," Hermione interjects, stepping forward from where the group had backed up a little, giving Harry and Sirius some space. "Someone recognized Harry when we were coming out of Ollivanders, it's only a matter of time before word spread and we need to be gone before that happens."

"Shit," Sirius answers eloquently, and addresses the group as a whole. "Listen, all of you, we're going back to Grimmauld Place. Apparate to Fred and George's place, we're gonna use their fireplace to Floo over there. I don't want to risk losing any of you through a long chain of Side-Along Apparition, it's safer. No arguments," he adds, when he sees Ginny opening her mouth in what looks like some kind of disagreement.

"Sirius -" Draco begins from the back of the group, and Sirius points at him.

"Not another word until we're home, I'm not done with you." He looks around the kids out onto the street, and then instructs, "Okay, go, back to Fred and George's."

They begin to Apparate out in small groups, Harry finding himself automatically gravitating towards Hermione and Ron, and within a minute, they're all in the living room of the twins' flat. Sirius ducks downstairs to tell them that they're using the fireplace for Floo, and that they'll only be a minute.

"What's - what's Floo?" Harry asks, as the others are getting set up for their departure.

"It's traveling between fireplaces, you know, quick way to jump from building to building. They have to be set up on the Floo network, though, so it doesn't work everywhere.  _Incendio_ ," Hermione says, pointing her wand at the fireplace in the living room. Bright flames spring up inside of it, and Harry, who at this point is getting used to magic but is still a little in awe of it, only jumps a little.

Ron grabs a handful of some powder housed in a little jar on top of the mantel, and throws it into the fire, which immediately flickers and turns a shade of brilliant green. In response to Harry's expression, he says, "It doesn't burn, don't worry."

"Okay."

The door to the stairs bangs open then, and Sirius bursts in. "Alright kids, we're good to go, get your bags, we're getting out of here. Neville, get out of the bathroom, you can take a piss at my house."

There's a lot of fumbled banging from the bathroom, and as the rest of them get ready to go, Neville bursts into the room, cursing. "Sirius, my bladder is about to fucking burst, so I better be first in line to get into that house."

Sirius makes a sweeping gesture in a kind of bowing motion, as though to send Neville on his way. Neville practically runs into the fireplace, grabbing his backpack and a handful of more powder along the way. He steps into the already-green fire and says, "Number 12, Grimmauld Place," before throwing the powder at his feet. He's immediately engulfed in massive green flames and disappears.

Harry tries to act like he's not even a little shocked at what happens, but he is.

All the kids begin to make their way through the fire, Sirius waiting for all of them to go first, before he follows. Harry goes second to last, right before Sirius, and realizes that now that everyone else is gone, it's the first and only time he's been alone with his godfather in his memory.

"Sirius, I don't know how to -" he begins, and Sirius is already holding the jar out to him.

"It's okay," Sirius tells him, and there's something in his tone - his wavering, full tone - and Harry thinks he sees a glistening element to his eyes, a working of his jaw that makes Harry think Sirius is trying to control his emotions. "It's - it's okay, Harry, uh, you just need to say '12 Grimmauld Place', very clearly, and then throw the powder down, and you'll be okay, don't worry." He says that, but Harry thinks that Sirius looks very worried.

Harry nods, and does what Sirius tells him.

His first thought upon beginning traveling by Floo is that while it takes longer and is far less specific, he much prefers the sensation to that of Apparating. This is just a long process of spinning, engulfed in the green flames, and whole he was nervous about speaking clearly enough, Harry realizes that he's fine as soon as the spinning flames come to a halt and he tumbles out of the fireplace.

He trips on the edge of his cloak, but Luna, who's standing nearest to the fireplace, reaches out and catches his arm easily.

"That was fun," Harry says, and there's a general hum of consensus.

He takes a look around, drinking in the vast contrast between the vibrancy of Fred and George's place in comparison to Sirius'. Harry admits, he doesn't know Sirius all that well, but from the infinitesimal conversations that he's had with him thus far, he doesn't think that this kind of Victorian Gothic interior design is very fitting to his personality.

They're in a room that seems to be far smaller than it really is, solely due to the heavy, velvet plum-colored drapes and the ornate, dark wallpaper that seems to have been in place since sometime in the nineteenth century. Harry wants to ask about it, but he doesn't really want to be rude - he opens his mouth to try and find a way to phrase things just as the fireplace crackles and Sirius steps out of it.

"Hey," he says casually, as though he's running into all of the teens in the room in a supermarket or something. "Everyone present and accounted for?"

After everyone in the room seems to say that yes, they are here, Sirius begins to make his way out of the room, saying, "Alright, everyone to the kitchen."

"Really?" Harry asks, a little perplexed. Given all that's going on, food is kind of the last thing on his mind.

"Yep," Sirius replies. "First of all, it's lunchtime. Second, I'm not done yelling at any of you yet." He leads the way out the door and downstairs, into an expansive kitchen, the walls and floor made mainly of stone. The appliances look as though they haven't been used in decades. He waves his wand upon entry and a loaf of bread and some assorted sandwich ingredients come floating out of the refrigerator, settling on the end of the massive table.

Harry steps forward. "How come you didn't have to say a spell?" he asks.

Sirius turns around after the food stops moving. "Shit, I keep forgetting that you know nothing about magic."

"You don't have to remind me."

"Sorry - hold on, let me explain. See, the majority of the time, we use nonverbal spells, especially when learning, but once you're an adult, you can switch to nonverbal spells for the most part." Sirius is gesticulating with his wand as he speaks, and little gold sparks dance out of the tip as he does so. "For example, if I was going to use a nonverbal spell, it would be the Summoning Charm, which is  _Accio_."

" _Accio_ ," Harry repeats, bouncing his wand between the thumb and forefinger on his left hand while holding it in his right. He isn't even concentrating on anything, just getting a feel for how the word rolls around in his mouth, but to his utter surprise, the loaf of bread on the table jerks towards him a little bit. "Holy shit."

"Jesus," Draco says mildly, sitting down next to Sirius. "That's a hard spell for beginners."

Hermione comes and sits down next to him. "We should start teaching you spells, you know, just going off of what we learned in first year, easy beginner spells that we can all show you."

Harry doesn't really know what to say for a moment. Logically, he knew that this is what was going to happen; why else would they have gotten him a wand? But something in his heart is feeling especially warm at the idea of these kids, his own age, taking time out of their lives and their educations just to find him and to teach him how to fit into this world that he's suddenly been thrust into.

"Wait, wait, wait," Sirius interrupts, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. Ron leans in front of him to grab some of the sandwich materials, and Sirius moves to be able to look at Hermione around the body in front of him. " _This_ was your plan? Like, your entire plan? You were gonna find Harry, teach him magic, and then what?"

"Find a way to defeat You-Know-Who, of course," Ginny says defiantly from behind Hermione. "What else were we supposed to do?"

" _Please_ tell me that you have some more to work off of than what just happened when Harry was a baby."

"Don't you?" Ron asks, a little sharply. "You're in the Order, and you're like, a real adult, you're supposed to know more than us."

"Real adult is a subjective term," Sirius says, leaning back. "I've never even had a real job, how am I any more of an adult than you are?"

"I don't know, you can turn into a dog?"

"You can turn into a  _dog_?"

"Yeah," Sirius answers distractedly, adding, "There's more to that story, by the way, I'll tell you in a minute." Directing his attention to the rest of the group, all of whom have taken seats around the table and have gotten food, Sirius continues, "Look, I know I'm a fucking hypocrite for saying so, but it's completely irresponsible for you lot to have snuck out like that. Fuck, you were gone for almost two weeks, what, did you think I wasn't going to catch up to you? Did you think that you could all take care of yourselves when the world has absolutely gone to shit? Merlin's dick, three of you aren't even seventeen yet."

"We were doing just fucking fine, Sirius," Ginny retorts. "We found Harry, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Believe me, I noticed," Sirius says. Harry notices that Sirius doesn't meet his eyes that often. He thinks, maybe, it's because Sirius doesn't quite know what to make of him or how to act around him yet. "I just wanted you to be safe about it."

"If we were  _safe_ about it, no one would have found Harry until it was too fucking late," Neville adds sharply and unexpectedly from the other end of the table."

"As much as I hate to agree with these nutjobs, they're right," Draco says from next to Sirius. "And you know it."

Sirius sighs. Harry gets the impression that he's torn between two sides of himself. Finally, he says, "Look, I know you were trying to do the right thing. Believe me, if I had found out where he was I probable would've gone myself."

The rest of the room is silent. Harry's focusing on the grain of the table wood and doesn't say anything.

Sirius speaks again. "So you were planning on teaching Harry based off of your old textbooks and just general knowledge?"

"Um...yes," Hermione replies after a moment, sounding a little embarrassed, as though her confidence in her teaching techniques has been shaken. "That was the plan, like to have each of us give him a bit of an education in what we're best at."

Sirius pauses. He reaches up and runs a hand through his hair, then says, "I have a better idea." He stands and starts to make his way out of the room, pausing at the doorway. "I'm gonna send an owl. You know, I have some pull with your favorite ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts professor."

"Really? He'd help?" Ron asks excitedly, leaning forward. "What am I saying, of course he would."

"Who?" Harry asks, looking around at the faces in the room, all of whom are lit with recognition.

"Oh, yeah, you're best friends with Professor Lupin, aren't you, Sirius?" Neville asks, and Sirius laughs and walks out of the door.

"And you're about as observant as a brick, Longbottom," Draco replies. "They're dating."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so remus is in the next chapter better buckle up pals


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know what, i've had this written for a while and i forgot to post it because i'm Awful. here it is, hope u enjoy. lots of wolfstar in this one xxxx
> 
> also it's kind of long bc it's pretty much all backstory but i just kept going bc i Love the two of them interacting. also Super fun, i've never written wolfstar from an outside pov before this so this was a new experience. hope it turned out well!

Three and a half hours later, the front door opens and Remus Lupin walks inside.

He does it so quietly that no one really hears him come in - Sirius had warned them about the shrieking portrait of his mother in the front hallway - except for Sirius, who had apparently been listening for the telltale click of the door unlocking. They'd been sitting in the living room - except for Draco, who had slunk off to his room upstairs - not really speaking to each other. At the sound that the door had made, Sirius had sat up quickly from his slouched position on the couch, his eyes alight.

Now that Harry had learned that Sirius could literally turn into a dog, he couldn't help but thinking that he looked exactly like one in that moment.

"Moony's here," Sirius had said under his breath, and Hermione, who had been sitting on the floor next to Sirius' couch, had looked up in surprise.

"How do you even know that?" she'd asked, but he was already walking towards the door.

"I'd know the sound of his gait anywhere," he'd replied, and had disappeared into the hallway.

Sirius had returned a few minutes later, looking a tiny bit disheveled around the collar, with a very tall and very lanky man, his hair short and curly and light brown, a noticeable scar that looks like it was once a cut running across the bridge of his nose and onto his right cheek, his worn clothes a great contrast to Sirius'. But Sirius is looking at him as though he hung the moon, a soft curve to his mouth, the backs of their hands almost touching, but not quite.

"Hi, Professor Lupin," Luna says, and he smiles.

"Hello, Luna," he answers. "It's been a while." His eyes scan the room, sliding right over Harry, then doubling back and focusing. He looks like he's trying very hard to think of what exactly he wants to say.

"Harry," Sirius says, "this is Remus. Remus, this is Harry."

"Oh, my god," Remus says softly under his breath, "of  _course_ you are."

"Hi," Harry replies. He gets it - all these people knew his parents, but at this point, even though it's only happened a few times, he's already starting to feel jaded with everyone looking at him as though he's some kind of miracle. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," Remus replies, and Harry notices that while Sirius still doesn't ever seem to look at him directly, still not knowing how to act around him, Remus can't seem to keep his eyes off of him, as though he's drinking in the fact that Harry's actually there, actually in front of him.

"Don't lie, Remus," Sirius says mildly, flopping back down on the couch. Remus follows him, sitting down beside him.

"It isn't a lie, it is nice to meet him."

"I  _meant_ it isn't the first time you've met him. Don't act like it is. Tell him the truth."

Remus sighs. "Alright, fine, yes, we've met before. You were a baby, though, so it's not like you'd remember. I'm - I was friends with your parents."

"You were," Harry says. He isn't sure whether he's stating it or asking it, all he knows is that the repetition of those words makes it feel more real. He pauses for a minute, then asks, "What were they like?"

Remus and Sirius exchange a look then, one full of meaning, as though they've been waiting for him to ask this. Sirius moves his leg slightly and nudges Hermione, still sitting on the floor by the couch, and she immediately stands.

"I'm going to - to go do some research, will you guys come with me," she says, grabbing her bag from where it was sitting next to her.

Ron and Neville had been playing chess on the opposite side of the room, with Ginny watching from beside them. Looking up at Hermione, Ron replies, "Come on, Hermione, we're in the middle of a game, I'm about to destroy Neville."

"Thanks for that, Ron," Neville says, and Ginny laughs.

" _Now_ ," Hermione emphasizes, looking remarkably like a rather strict teacher. Without another word, Ron stands and follows her out of the room, leaving the chessboard where it is. Everyone else does the same, until it’s just Harry, sitting on the couch opposite Sirius and Remus, his hands empty and his mouth full of questions.

There’s a pause, and Remus clears his throat. After a moment, he says, "James Potter had one of the biggest hearts of anyone I’ve ever met."

Harry’s breath catches in his throat.

Remus reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose, leaning forward a bit as though speaking of his dead friend physically hurts him. He continues, "He was smart. Kind. Sharp wit, strong sense of self. He was a brilliant wizard and an incredible friend. Lily was a firecracker, she loved fiercely and absolutely and never hesitated to do what was right. They were always there for us, no matter what."

Sirius' jaw is clenched and his eyes are bright. "We should tell him, Remus."

"Should we?"

"Everyone else knows"

"Tell me what?"

Remus and Sirius tear their eyes away from each other and Sirius sits up straight. “Harry, remember when I said I could turn into a dog? There’s a story to that, but it’s mostly Remus'. He should be the one to tell it.”

There’s a pause. Remus looks as though he’s about to speak, then shuts his mouth again. Instead of starting the story, he says, “I need a fucking drink.”

Sirius stands. “I’ll get the firewhiskey.”

He returns about three minutes later with three shot glasses and a bottle that reads _Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey_ , setting them down on the coffee table. After deftly pouring the whiskey into the glasses, Sirius slides one of them across the table to Harry and hands one of the others to Remus. “Cheers,” he says, raising his own glass slightly before knocking it back.

Harry and Remus follow suit, Harry wincing at the burn in his throat and trying not to cough. It helps distract him from the lump that’s been sitting there since Remus started talking about his parents.

“So,” Remus says, swallowing past the shot, “I’m gonna preface this with a backstory.”

“Okay,” Harry says, feeling a little buzz in his stomach from the firewhiskey.

“When I was four years old, my father got on the wrong side of a very shitty man.” Remus pours himself another shot. “More specifically, he was a werewolf. Is, actually, he’s still around.” He takes the shot like it’s nothing and continues. “Fenrir Greyback. Anyway, my father got on his bad side, and I was four years old, and he attacked me, and so because of that, they were pretty sure that I would never be able to go to Hogwarts.”

Sirius moves his hand a little, like he’s itching to reach out and touch Remus, but he seems to think better of it, and doesn’t make any real movement, he just nudges Remus gently with his leg and keeps it there, so that they’re still touching.

“Dumbledore came to my parents and had a solution that would let me go to school with the other kids. Because there wasn’t a cure, I’d have to go off campus and transform in a secure location every month, and he told them that there was an old building just outside of the village, Hogsmeade, that would be a safe place for me. They dug a tunnel that would connect from the grounds to the shack and planted the Whomping Willow over it so no other students would find it and go through.”

“What’s the Whomping Willow?”

“It’s a big ass tree that has natural defensive systems; basically if you get too close to it, it literally whomps you unless you press a knot near the base of the trunk that freezes it for a few minutes,” Sirius explains, gesticulating as though to indicate the motion of the branches.

“Thanks for the eloquence, Pads,” Remus deadpans, sounding a bit irritated, but the corner of his mouth tells a different story.

“Anything for you, Moony.”

“What’s with the nicknames?” Harry interrupts, and Sirius laughs a little.

“We’re getting there. Remus, do you want to continue?”

“Sure.”

Remus keeps telling his story, talking about how he went to school and for the first time in his life he had friends – Sirius, James, and their friend Peter – and more than anything he was afraid to lose them, but to his utter surprise, when they discovered the truth, about two years after they’d met, they didn’t leave him, but they decided to help him in the only way they knew how – by becoming Animagi.

“That’s where the nicknames come from,” Remus says, his posture looser now from the alcohol and the comfort of having already started his story, leaning a little against Sirius, who has his arm across the back of the couch. “I’m Moony, for pretty obvious reasons; Sirius is Padfoot because he’s a massive dog; James is Prongs because he’s a stag; and Peter is Wormtail because he’s a rat.”

“A rat is fucking right,” Sirius says under his breath.

“Sirius,” Remus admonishes softly, his hand on Sirius' knee, and Sirius falls silent.

“Anyway, it was all fucking great until _Sirius_ decided to pull the worst prank of all time, and that’s how we had a big fight.”

“Do you have to tell this part of the story every time?”

“Of course, you’re a fucking idiot, I have to talk about how you almost killed someone.”

“I didn’t _mean_ to,” Sirius attempts, but Remus ignores him.

“So here’s the part where we talk about the Great Snape Rivalry of the 1970s,” he continues.

“Severus Snape is a fucking dick,” Sirius interrupts, “Let’s be frank about this, Remus, he hated James because he was jealous of him and he hated us because we were James’ best friends.”

“How can you be Frank if you’re Sirius?” Remus asks.

“I can’t believe I set myself up for that.”

“ _I_ can’t believe you two have the worst senses of humor I’ve ever heard,” Harry interjects.

“James would’ve liked that joke,” Sirius says, a bit defensively.

“Yeah, he would’ve, but Lily would’ve hated it, look at him taking after his parents.” Remus seems to refocus. “But you’re right, Sirius, he did hate us because we were James’ friends. He also fucking hated you because of your prank, and he hated me because I’m smarter than him.”

“I love your modesty, Moony.”

“I don’t have to be modest about the facts, Pads. I’ve seen our class rankings.” He directs his attention back to Harry. “Anyway, Snape was obsessed with finding out what the actual truth was with me, since I always gave some bullshit excuse every month, and the teachers all knew the facts, so they were fine with everything. At the end of our fifth year, Sirius accidentally on purpose let slip that if you pressed a certain knot on the trunk of the Whomping Willow, you’d be able to get to the Shrieking Shack, where I was.”

“I thought it would be _funny_ – and it’s not as though I actually said you were there. I said there was something at the end of the tunnel that the teachers were trying to keep a secret. Which was true. And it _was_ funny, especially seeing the way he was clearly pretending not to be listening to me staging the conversation.”

“He could have died, Sirius. James was the one that pulled him back before he got to the Shack. I didn’t speak to Sirius until the start of the next school year.”

“I was surprised at how long you could hold a grudge.”

“My ability to hold a grudge is not in past tense, Sirius, I still can and I still will.”

“Is that a threat? You shouldn’t make threats that you don’t mean, Moony.”

“I’ve never said anything to you that I don’t mean before in my life, and I don’t intend to start now,” Remus replies, and Sirius smiles a little. Harry gets the sense that they’re sharing a bit of a private moment, and he looks down at his knees, a little embarrassed with the way he feels as though he’s intruding.

There’s a pause, Harry still looking down at his lap, before Remus clears his throat and continues.

“Anyway, Snape was pretty much in love with your mum, because they’d known each other before school. Long story short, they had a falling out, because he finally revealed himself to be, essentially, a wizard racist, and because she was a Muggle-born, she’d had enough. He called her a slur and she ditched him, and that’s about when she started hanging out with us.”

“Seventh year, just about,” Sirius adds. “That summer, she and James were made Head Boy and Girl, and they started bonding over that, ended up dating. Jamie had liked her for _years_ at this point, but he was kind of an ass, so he needed to mature before she was gonna be interested in him.”

“So school ended, but You-Know-Who had started getting to gain some notoriety, and Dumbledore was putting together a resistance, and we all joined immediately after school. It wasn’t like Sirius or James had any lack of money, so they didn’t need to have jobs, and I was needed especially for my ability to gain intel from the werewolves.”

“You were undercover for a while,” Sirius says quietly, as though he doesn’t like even thinking about that part of the story.

“Yeah,” Remus answers in a matching tone, then looks to Harry and keeps speaking. “So we joined the resistance, which was and still is called the Order of the Phoenix –” Sirius gestures to the walls as Remus explains, “– the headquarters of which we are currently in. Though, it didn’t use to be the headquarters. This used to be Sirius' parents’ house.”

“Hence the bad décor,” Sirius comments, and Harry snorts.

“I didn’t want to say anything,” he says.

“No, no, believe me, I am _fully_ aware of how fucking depressing it is to even walk into this house. Someday we’ll gut it and make it a nice place to live. I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Remus stresses, and Harry and Sirius focus on him again, having once again not realized how easily they’ve been getting distracted. “Anyway, we were in the resistance, and it was all going great, I guess, as great as it could be, given the circumstances, when the prophecy happened.”

“Prophecies are a real thing? I mean, Draco said something about that earlier but I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me or not.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sirius says, shifting a little on the couch as though he got tired of sitting in the same position for a while. “They’re pretty rare, most of the divination you hear is bullshit, but sometimes you get real prophecies made by actual Seers. This was one of them. Pretty vague, but specific enough that it was interpreted in a very real way.”

Harry can feel in his gut in that moment that he knows what the prophecy was about. He knows how this story ends. But he sits quietly and lets the men in front of him continue telling to him as though he hasn’t already guessed the ending.

“The others filled you in on what happened with –” Remus seems to be hesitating rather than saying the name, and Harry opens his mouth to say it, but Remus raises a hand, cutting him off. “Actually, this is something I wanted to talk to you about, Sirius, I just found this out.”

“What is it?” Sirius and Remus seem to have temporarily forgotten about Harry, their attentions focused solely on each other.

“There’s a Taboo on the name. I knew it wouldn’t be a problem with the kids, but for you and I – it’s something we need to keep in mind.”

“Ah, fuck.” Sirius clears his throat and looks away from Remus. They’re still sitting with their legs comfortably pressed against each other’s, and Harry feels a vague, undefined jealousy for the fact that he’s never felt that kind of easy trust with someone else before, be it with a friend or with a partner. “So we can’t say his name, we have to call him You-Know-Who.”

“Why?” Harry asks, scrunching his eyebrows. “What’s a Taboo?”

“A Taboo is kind of what the name implies, an alert will go off whenever people say Vol – I mean, You-Know-Who’s name,” Remus explains. “There’s such a culture of fear surrounding him that most people are afraid to even say his name, and so it makes it easier for him to track down his biggest oppositions –”

“Us,” Sirius supplies, gesturing vaguely at the whole house.

“– because they’re the only ones who really say his name. You know, I would try to tell you to tone down the self-satisfaction, Pads, but to be fair, you really are right.”

“I love hearing those words come out of your mouth.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get used to it. Harry, the others told you about what happened with You-Know-Who, for the most part, right?” Remus says, once again bringing the roundabout conversation back to its purpose.

“Yeah, I mean, I know what happened. To my parents. Kind of.”

Sirius and Remus exchange a look, and Sirius takes his arm off the back of the couch and leans forward. “When Draco told you about the prophecy, did he go into the details of what it actually said?”

Harry shrugs. “Just that You-Know-Who thought that I would be able to defeat him, that’s why he went after my family.”

“Yeah, that’s the gist of it.”

Harry pauses for a moment, not looking at either of them, before bursting out, “But _why_? I was a kid, I didn’t even know any magic, why would he think that I could’ve done anything to hurt him?”

“We don’t know, Harry,” Remus replies gently, and Harry meets his eyes. “All we know is that the prophecy said that the parents of the child who had the ability to defeat him had faced him three times and survived, and that the child would be born at the end of July. That’s all. He thought that it meant you.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, so Sirius takes the reins of the story, and continues it. “So once we found out that You-Know-Who was after your parents, Dumbledore decided that they needed to go undercover, and we put their house under the Fidelius Charm.”

Before Harry can ask, Remus is already explaining to him about the Fidelius Charm, adding to the end of his explanation, “Everyone thought that Sirius was their Secret Keeper, even _I_ thought that he was, he didn’t even tell me, but it was Peter the whole time. What we didn’t know was that Peter was a spy, he was working for You-Know-Who and had been for about a year at that point.”

Sirius says bluntly, “He told You-Know-Who how and where to find your parents, and he came after them and hunted them down. And you – you know how it ends.”

Harry nods. He doesn’t really trust himself to speak. He’d thought it was bad when he’d learned that his parents had been murdered, but now? He’s been told that one of their best friends betrayed them. One of their _best friends_ had caused their deaths, had caused Harry’s life to be irreparably changed, had been the catalyst in everything being taken from the three of them. He could have had a family.

When Harry does speak, he says, “Why did you go to prison?”

“Oh, that – that’s actually the next part of the story,” Sirius says. “I went after Peter and decided to confront him over this in the street, and he – he started shouting about how I was the spy and how I had betrayed Lily and James and then he blasted half the street to bits. A lot of Muggles were killed. He cut off his finger to make it look like he’d been blown up and he turned into a rat and escaped into the sewer.”

“That’s fucking _shit_ , Sirius,” Harry exclaims indignantly, and the corner of his godfather’s mouth quirks up at his outburst. “At least tell me you got a fair trial!”

Sirius laughs. “I wish. They sent me straight to Azkaban without a trial at all.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck is right. I stayed for a while, but when the Weasleys won a trip to Egypt, they were in a picture in the paper, and Peter was posing as Ron’s pet rat at that point. I broke out. Remus and I caught him. I got my charges dropped. He got sent to Azkaban instead of me.”

“He’s out by now, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Sirius sighs. “They’re all fucking copycats, no one would have even _thought_ to break out if I hadn’t done it first but now – everyone and their mum are just hopping on out of Azkaban, it’s fucking inevitable.”

“You sound bitter about that,” Harry replies, trying not to laugh.

“Only a little,” Sirius says, but he sounds a little miffed.

They sit and talk for what feels like half an hour at most, but before Harry knows it, there’s a soft knock on the door and Ginny is poking her head in. He can’t imagine what she thinks happened while everyone was gone, as the three of them are all wavering between a state of giddy intoxication (Remus had kept pouring the firewhiskey and no one had said no) and tearful reminiscence.

“Hi,” Harry says brightly as Ginny steps fully into the room, raising her eyebrows at the sight of Remus lying on the floor with a large black dog sitting on his chest. “What’s up?”

“Uh, just wondering if anyone wanted to get some dinner,” she replies, trying not to laugh. “I take it you’ve been caught up on everything?”

Harry points a sloppy, solitary finger gun across the room at Ginny. “Now I know _everything_.”

“You still can’t do magic though.”

The other finger gun is raised. “You have a point.”

Remus groans unintelligibly from the floor. “I guess we can start school tomorrow. Class will be held from here, considering that Pads doesn’t seem inclined to get up anytime soon.” Padfoot wags his tail in response.

“Cool.” Harry stands, a little unsteadily, and Ginny reaches out a hand for him to use for balance.

He’s stupid and a little drunk and she’s pretty and her freckles look like more stars than he’s ever seen in the night sky and when she grabbed his hand, he felt his stomach jolt upwards to shudder right behind his rapidly beating heart and he doesn’t want her to let go.

She does though, and Harry lets himself be slightly disappointed as she says, “So, dinner?” as she walks out the door.


End file.
